Life is a story…https://sueyeap.com
Food, travel, pop culture and life with Sue YeapTue, 17 Jul 2018 12:19:20 +0000en
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1 http://wordpress.com/https://sueyeap.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/cropped-dscf5716.jpg?w=32Life is a story…https://sueyeap.com
3232Can a pair of shoes change your life?https://sueyeap.com/2018/07/26/can-a-pair-of-shoes-change-your-life/
https://sueyeap.com/2018/07/26/can-a-pair-of-shoes-change-your-life/#respondThu, 26 Jul 2018 14:20:13 +0000http://sueyeap.com/2018/07/26/can-a-pair-of-shoes-change-your-life/More]]>This is the question I asked myself tonight after taking off my first pair of Brooks running shoes.

I bought them after my second running session almost three weeks ago, learning the reasons my Nikes were hurting my toes was possibly because one foot is a full half size bigger than the other.

I am not a runner. I am not in the least bit sporty. I swim in the backyard pool daily over summer and I was a regular walker until I got a godawful cough earlier in the year knocked the motivation right out of me.

The last time I “ran” was probably in Little Athletics when I was 12. That’s not counting being dragged along by my dogs when they decide they’d rather run than walk.

Three weeks ago I joined a learn to run group with a friend from work. The course is aimed at “women of a certain age” who have never run and want to learn how without dying in the process (that last bit is not actually in the promo blurb).

We’re doing a lot of intervals and clocking up 4-6km a session at varying paces depending on our own stamina and fitness (some of the participants have obviously done this before and would thereby be clocking up more).

Some have questioned why anyone would start running in their late 40s.

Am I planning to do the City to Surf?

After nine sessions straight tonight I felt a step closer to my endgame – being able to go for a run for enjoyment. Not because it’s exercise or some sort of punishment.

I’ll never turn into one of those people who runs daily, faces grimacing, covered in sweat. That does not look like fun.

If I can find some good podcasts, or company, I think the motivation will follow. Assuming my knees don’t pack it in.

After all it costs nothing to go for a run.

]]>https://sueyeap.com/2018/07/26/can-a-pair-of-shoes-change-your-life/feed/0taloulah22Time flieshttps://sueyeap.com/2018/07/17/time-flies-3/
https://sueyeap.com/2018/07/17/time-flies-3/#respondMon, 16 Jul 2018 23:11:46 +0000http://sueyeap.com/?p=842More]]>Woops. Where did almost three years go without a post?

To ease back into things I’ll post some links to stories from The West.

Here are some photos from a recent work trip to Singapore; these are some of the items from the degustation menu from one-star Michelin restaurant Labyrinth.

If you’d asked me 10 years ago if I wanted to got to Los Angeles or what I thought of Los Angeles I wouldn’t have had much to say. I’d never been there and after 9/11, I’d pretty much written off the US as a holiday destination.

Then in 2006 came the offer of a whirlwind work trip to Los Angeles. Just a couple of days in Beverly Hills for, of all things, to celebrate the hit soapie The Bold and the Beautiful. Even the man processing my visa application at the US consulate in Perth thought that was pretty funny.

It was a quick trip and at times a lonely one, being the only Aussie on a foreign press junket where English was not the first language of choice. I extended the trip a couple of days (long story) and managed to fit in a movie junket and a visit to the LA Times Festival of Books. Anytime I saw little kids I got homesick; my son was only two at the time – he didn’t want to talk to me when I got back.

But I got a taste for LA. The crooked palm trees. Starbucks. The Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf. Bagels and boiled eggs. Even filter coffee with half and half. People were friendly. Waiters were friendly. Food serves were enormous and servers always wanted to load me up with take away.

I started of at the Elan in West Hollywood, before moving to the Avalon in Beverly Hills for a few days to attend the Bold junket, including a night at a club to watch Ronn Moss perform. It was all a bit surreal.

No one walks in LA, so the hotel staff kept reminding me, but I managed to clock up some ks on foot. Cabs were expensive. I think it cost me $50 to get from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica. Cabs also work in districts and I was surprised you couldn’t walk on to the street to hail one (that’s a New York thing).

I became determined to return with the family and we managed to save up for a family holiday in 2009, clocking up a near 30 hour economy long haul flight from Perth to Brisbane (or was it Sydney) and on to LA and then finally, JFK in New York.

I’ll save New York for another post; we were so sad to leave the Big Apple we nearly cried, even though LA was still to come.

Pictured above are some of the places we’ve come to love in LA. First, the Farmers Market at the corner of Third and Fairfax. It has been a mandatory stop on each visit, whether for a coffee at Short Order (apparently now closed) or some Mexican from Loteria. It was literally the first place we went to after picking up our hire car in March 2012.

Next, Venice Beach. That place can be a whole lot of crazy. But there are some great restaurants and hidden patisseries tucked away, not to mention the canals. We loved the fact the staff at the Starbucks near our hotel in 2012 knew our orders by heart within about a day.

And last but not least the Pacific Wheel at Santa Monica Pier, beautiful by day or night. I just love Santa Monica. I’ve never been on the wheel or attractions (see previous post about fear of heights and add rides to that) but we have eaten at Bubba Gump and had coffee along Third Street Promenade. So many cool places to eat and shop around there.

A lot of people say they hate LA; it’s polluted, there are to many homeless, it’s dirty. They hate LAX, they hate the queues at LAX, they hate the security at LAX.

So much of this is in the eye of the beholder. I love to see the Downtown skyline. I am always amazed by the 16 lane freeways, the traffic snaking down Santa Monica Boulevard. The streets and boulevards that seem to run from coast to airport and across the entire city (on my first trip I tried to walk from one address on Wiltshire to another not realising they were MILES apart -this was pre Google maps).

Work has fortunately taken me back to LA four winters in a row; one year it was freezing and we had to buy coats before a function but every other year, the weather has been crisp but beautiful. One day I hope to experience the heat of an LA summer holiday and get to really indulge in a hotel swimming pool.

In other circumstances, in another lifetime, maybe I’d have lived and worked in LA. Sadly it’s a city that’s become unaffordable for many; read why here in LA Magazine, absolutely my favourite monthly magazine (I’ve been subscribing for maybe three years now through Zinio, having become quite the fan when I found an edition in my hotel room back in 2012).

So for now, I thank Los Angeles for the food, the fun times, the memories…and the photos, of which I will post more in coming weeks.

How can you not love Paris? It’s a city I’d return to in a heartbeat although I must admit the recent terrorist incidents have made me wonder just how keen I’d be to return at the moment. Not to mention a lack of actual funds or time off.

I first visited Paris in 1989 with a couple of friends who were living in London. We picked a busy weekend (sporting event? soccer I think?) and when we arrived (I think we flew?) hotels were scarce. With my high school French we managed to find a hotel with three sagging beds with dodgy chenille bedspreads. We couldn’t risk not taking the room because there was a trail of tourists with the same idea following us.

Well, that could have been my first visit, or my second; I managed to visit Paris three times across a four or five week period during my first big European adventure in 1989. I had intended to visit with one of my best theatre friends but when I arrived in London she was broke.

So I ended up doing a Contiki tour that took me to Paris, Florence, Venice, Switzerland, Austria, and Amsterdam. We stayed in budget hotels, backpackers and even some chalets in the woods somewhere along the line.

The third trip was with my now less-broke friend, and I am pretty sure we flew. I have no idea where we stayed. We bought interesting brocade jackets and tunics. We went to Marche aux Puces de Saint-Ouen which I seem to recall had thoroughly appalling toilets.

Visit two was with my husband in 1998, en route to a wedding in Scotland. It was May and unseasonably hot. We picked a hotel that ended up being not far from Sacre Coeur but somewhat too close to the Sexodrome.

Our last visit, in 2007, was as a family en route to a wedding in Amsterdam. We arrived via Eurostar and spent a couple of days in Paris before heading to Disneyland Paris. We then returned for a final few days before taking a Thalys train to Amsterdam.

For the first few days we stayed at the Hotel Valadon. By the looks of the website it has had a serious makeover since then. We chose it due to the proximity of the Rue Cler markets which I had read about in a Rick Steves guidebook. I think that was the start of my habit of basing hotel locations on their proximity to restaurants and markets.

On our return we stayed at Residence Les Gobelins, the website for which doesn’t seem to be working at present but Gobelins seems to indicate it is still open. It was a budget hotel, close to the Rue Mouffetard markets and restaurants, and we had a family room with three beds. The breakfasts were simple – croissants and baguettes with coffee.

I remember painstakingly researching all of these hotels over and over – this was probably the early days of TripAdvisor from memory – and perhaps emailing inquiries to half a dozen about rates and room set ups…

In all of these visits I have never made it to the top of the Eiffel Tower, given my fear of heights seems to get worse, not better with age. I think I made it to level two on my second visit. Last time, the family went to the top while I ate a baguette by myself on the first level.

It’s my aim to brush up on my now very rusty French and visit Paris and New York for my 50th. Watch this space (for a few more years!).

]]>https://sueyeap.com/2015/09/08/paris-je-taime/feed/0taloulah22Photographic memoryhttps://sueyeap.com/2015/09/07/photographic-memory/
https://sueyeap.com/2015/09/07/photographic-memory/#respondMon, 07 Sep 2015 14:19:32 +0000http://sueyeap.com/?p=704More]]>Back in the days when I still used a camera that took film, the first thing I did after going on a holiday or to a party was race out to a chemist or photo lab to get the film processed.

Remember when one-hour photo services popped up? Remember the delight at poring over the photos with friends, and the annoyance at getting finger prints all over prints accidentally ordered as glossy instead of matte finish?

These days we have instant gratification on our iPhones and smart devices. Photos can be instantly viewed and instantly shared on social media. The days of printing photos and painstakingly putting them into albums, for most of us, is a distant memory.

But what happens to all the dozens, hundreds, even thousands of digital images that weren’t able to be shared or worthy of sharing at the time? Or ones taken before we started to really embracing social media? Or had the data and ability to easily upload images?

I’ve recently started trying to locate all my holiday photos to unite them on one portable hard drive. Most of them are backed up on my PC. Some are backed up to our NAS. Others are on DVD-ROMS. Anything taken pre-2007, or on an old phone, who knows.

Having had a digital camera of some sort of other since the late 1990s, there are probably thousands of photos unaccounted for on old hard disks…and very few have been printed due to the cost of printing/ink back then (my poor children also have incomplete baby books thanks to digital cameras!)

Over the next few weeks I hope to upload assorted travel photos, partly to keep my family holiday memories alive, and partly to inspire anyone else planning a holiday to somewhere distant and exciting.

The photo below is a street somewhere in Amsterdam. I’ve been to Amsterdam three times, in 1989, 1998 and 2007 but hadn’t really thought much about the city again until last year after the characters in the teen weepie The Fault in Our Stars went there.

Somewhere in Amsterdam, 2007

Then it crossed my mind after the shooting last month on an Amsterdam to Paris train (we’ve done the reverse trip from Paris to Amsterdam).

We were in Amsterdam for a friend’s wedding and a group of us stayed in a bed and breakfast called Mae’s B & B. We had the top floor attic, accessed up a very steep and narrow staircase. We had great breakfasts every morning and a couple of nights, had delicious Indonesian take away from a restaurant down the road.

The city was easy to get around by foot or by bike, although that was not a mode of transport open to us with a pram. One of the things I remember about Amsterdam and Oldenzaal, which we visited in 1998, was that people often left their curtains wide open, giving passers a glimpse at how they live.

Certainly a place I’d like to get back to one day…

Houses, AmsterdamAmsterdam canal by night
]]>https://sueyeap.com/2015/09/07/photographic-memory/feed/0Eiffel Towertaloulah22Somewhere in Amsterdam, 2007Houses, AmsterdamAmsterdam canal by nightNewsflash! It’s a New Post… about a #dirtystreetpiehttps://sueyeap.com/2014/09/13/dirty-street-pie/
https://sueyeap.com/2014/09/13/dirty-street-pie/#respondSat, 13 Sep 2014 10:48:52 +0000http://sueyeap.com/?p=700More]]>Clearly the “back in business” post in April was premature because here we are in September (what!? September!? It’s almost Christmas) with not a sign of a post in between.

So I’m cutting myself some slack. I have a life. I have a family. I have a full-time job where I use up my best words every day and then some. Maintaining a blog as well as a social media presence – I haven’t gone dark on Twitter or Instagram – takes time.

So rather than long, ambitious posts like the ones that have been stuck in my drafts for weeks and months, I think I’ll try to keep them short and sweet. Or savoury if the mood suits. A picture says a thousand words, so I’ll try to post more photos.

In the meantime, here’s a link to a feature from The West’s Travel pages that ran last month about my culinary adventures through Sydney’s Surry Hills in June when I was a guest of Destination NSW and Vivid Sydney.

A selection of images ran in the print version including this one, or a variation of this one, that I took outside the ever-popular Bourke Street Bakery.

I sat on a park bench on the other side of the road eating a chicken, sweet potato, pea and lime pickle pie out of a paper bag.

And just as I typed this, I realised, I ate a #dirtystreetpie before that hashtag was coined this month on reality series #thebachelorau after Laurina had tears and a tanty for being taken to the legendary Harry’s Cafe de Wheels!

Which is also a neat segue into partially explaining my blog absence, because I have been addicted to watching The Bachelor Australia every Wednesday and Thursday and tweeting, possibly a little over-enthusiastically.

Even though I am tweeting in Perth real-time, ie two hours behind the east coast, a selection of my tweets have ended up on news.com.au much to my colleagues’ amusement.

Anyway, must go, have some ACTUAL pies to make before the footy finishes!

I’d had my eye on the Nikon 1 range since they were featured in MasterChef last year but they were very expensive on launch and it has been near on impossible to get details of the updated models J2, J3, V2, and S1. Nikon’s website suggested interacting with Twitter but I got no reply via email or Twitter.

With most camera suppliers low on information about if and when the new Nikon models would arrive, and prices varying wildly between the single and dual lens kit, I did quite a bit more research, and ended up with the EOS – in red.

Having used a smart phone, iPhone or point and shoot for the better part of the six years, this has been a steep learning curve and I have a long, long way to go.

My first photographic subjects were assorted family dogs (you can see in the flickr feed, right).

Then I set off to Fremantle to the Street Arts Festival. Snaps below.

Words are my livelihood, not images, but I am snap happy at the best of times. The big question is – what to do with all the photos? There’s only so many you can stick on Twitter and Instagram.

A recent backup of my camera cards and folders revealed hundreds and hundreds of holiday photos I had forgotten about.

Perhaps it’s time to go crazy printing the next time there’s an 8c photo offer.

Earlier in the year when I was at the TCA Winter Press Tour in Los Angeles I attended the session for the new Shonda Rhimes drama Scandal starring Kerry Washington.

The lovely Annabel Crabb was happy to chat about her new season of Kitchen Cabinet – she has high praise for the cooking skills of WA Senator Louise Pratt. Not so much so for poor Joe Hockey‘s barbecue prowess and the fact his oven still had plastic on it!

In an ideal world, I’d have posted the links to the kids’ movie reviews in the school holidays, not several days after they finished. Yes believe it or not, I watch TV every day and still go to the movies too!

And let’s call it a wrap with Perth’s Mandy McElhinney aka Rhonda the safe driver soon to be known as Nene King.

]]>https://sueyeap.com/2012/10/18/big-social-media-night-in/feed/0taloulah22Where is 125 St Georges Tce, Perth?https://sueyeap.com/2012/08/19/where-is-125-st-georges-tce-perth/
https://sueyeap.com/2012/08/19/where-is-125-st-georges-tce-perth/#respondSun, 19 Aug 2012 08:38:15 +0000http://sueyeap.com/?p=649More]]>To the casual observer this looks like a pretty boring photo. Part of a building facade with the number 129.

However if you have read this blog lately, you may have noticed a slight obsession with the redevelopment of my old workplace, Newspaper House, formerly of 125 St Georges Tce.

Well, if you take a stroll past the revitalised buildings (Newspaper House, WA Trustees, Royal Insurance) that house restaurants The Trustee and The Heritage, plus assorted pop up shops – you will find there is no longer a 125.

So I did what any good journalist would do, and Googled for the answer.

It would appear that 125 is now the address of the Brookfield Place redevelopment featuring the City Square tower, home of BHP Billiton.

It will also soon be home to The Print Hall restaurant and bar complex which I simply cannot wait to visit, partly for the food and partly for the view of the Swan River which we never truly appreciated from our old canteen.

Somehow I doubt I’ll hear anyone calling out “salmon sammich ready” or that any restaurant will be serving chips and gravy.

St Georges definitely looks like it will be the place to be this spring and summer.